Where Ghosts Walk
by Errant Reality
Summary: The Doctor and Clara land in Ravenswood where they run into the Liars. As they attempt to find Ali before A gets to her, they encounter one of the Doctor's creepiest enemies.
1. Chapter 1

"How about the liquid moon of Purwoosha?" Clara heard, leaning against the Tardis console. The Doctor peeked his head around the other side. "Clearest waters in the universe. Makes the Caribbean look filthy" he grinned.

"I'm not convinced," Clara scrunched up her nose, arms folded.

"Clearest waters. In the universe. How are you not convinced?" the Doctor said, confused. "What if I tell you the liquid moon of Purwoosha also holds the 35th century's greatest underwater theme park?"

"Now we're talking," Clara approved. The Tardis rumbled, trembling as it was buffeted by the Time Vortex. Moments later, it hit the ground with a light thud. Brimming with energy, the Doctor bounced towards the doors.

"Hold up, Doctor. Can we breathe? How can we breathe if it's underwater?"

The Doctor stopped in his tracks. He held one finger in the air and rushed beneath the console platform, great coat whooshing out behind him. Clara could hear him muttering as he rummaged through the infinite number of things he had stored down there. She tapped a foot against the glass floor. A moment later, he returned, a silver piece of metal clamped over his nose and mouth.

"What is that?"

"Air filter. Sucks in the water, extracts the oxygen, sends the water back out again. Brilliant piece of technology. Just hold it over your mouth," he said, voice muffled as he slipped the strap of the filter around Clara's head. He gave her a thumbs up as she adjusted it. This time, she said nothing as he opened the Tardis door.

He stuck his head out. Brought it back in. Stepped over the threshold. Jumped. Turned back to look at Clara.

"Definitely not the liquid moon of Purwoosha," he announced, disappointment lacing his voice. Clara slipped the air filter off her face as the Doctor did the same. She stepped out beside him. Fog clung to the ground, making shady ghosts of everything further than twenty feet from the Tardis.

"So, where are we, then?" Clara asked as a pair of people went past in period dress. "The Victorian era?"

The Doctor stuck out his tongue. Brought it back into his mouth, grimacing. "21st century, I'm afraid. Pennsylvania. But, apparently there's a costume party! I need my top hat. Top hats are cool."

"How did we end up here? 21st century United States isn't exactly the greatest underwater theme park of the 35th century," Clara pointed out.

"I know!" the Doctor called from the depths of the console room. "Tardis must have picked up something. We should find out what it is," he emerged, top hat sitting upon his head. As they followed the path the couple had, Clara had the niggling feeling that the Doctor was dressed much more appropriately than she was. He hadn't been wrong about a costume party. Everywhere around them milled people in costumes so elaborate, it was hard to think that the two of them hadn't just walked into the middle of a 19th century gathering. Albeit a gathering in a graveyard. Somehow, Clara couldn't help remembering every ghost story she'd ever heard as a child. And Britain was home to the oldest, most terrifying ghost stories in the world. She felt eyes on her back and hugged herself. She'd never liked cemeteries.

"Who has a party in a cemetery?" she whispered to the Doctor.

"Isn't it great?" he wheezed, clasping his hands together. They came to a stop behind a group of four girls, furiously whispering to each other.

"We have to find Ali before A does," the tallest of the group said.

"Are we even sure she's going to be here?" the girl in a purple dress whispered back.

"A's sure. That's good enough for me," the blonde girl said, not bothering to whisper. "It's time to end this. I want to find Ali, and I want answers. Besides, the sooner I can get out of this corsage, the better."

"Corset," the fourth girl corrected.

"Whatever. Just look for a blonde in a red coat."

Clara glanced at the Doctor. He'd overheard the exchange too. An conspiratorial smile lifted one corner of his mouth.

"Lost your friend?" he said to the girls. Four heads whipped around to stare at him. Four pairs of eyes narrowed.

"Who the hell are you?" the blonde asked.

"Hanna," one of the others said in low warning, taking a step forward, like she would tackle Hanna if she launched herself at the Doctor.

"No, she's right. Who are you and what do you know about Ali?" the smallest girl of the group looked at the Doctor.

"I'm the Doctor, this is Clara. And I happen to be very good at finding lost things."

"Are you a detective?" Hanna asked.

"Hanna, he's a doctor, not a detective. But what kind of doctor is good at finding lost things?"

"Spencer's right. What's your real name? What are you a doctor of?" the tallest girl, in a blue pinstripe suit, demanded.

The Doctor flashed a grin. Clara could almost taste the glee rolling off him in waves. This always was his favourite part. She could have rolled her eyes.

"He's just the Doctor. Like he says, he's good at finding lost things. If you've lost someone, we can help," she stepped forward, interrupting. The girls frowned at her, sticking together. Uncertainty burned in their eyes. Whatever was going on, Clara had the feeling that it was a lot bigger than either she or the Doctor could possibly anticipate. In her experience, people weren't usually as suspicious of other people as these four girls were.

"Like hell. This could all be part of A's plan, for all we know. I say we walk away right now from the creepy doctor and his girlfriend," Hanna stated to her friends. Clara bristled.

"First of all, I'm not anybody's girlfriend, least of all his. Secondly, we're trying to offer help. Are all Americans so hostile? Is it in the rulebook"

The girl in the black velvet jacket laughed. "Yeah, we are; like you said, it's in the rulebook. And you're British? I was going to apply to Oxford and Cambridge, but after my Stanford admissions disaster, I don't think they'll have me. I'm Spencer. This is Hanna, Aria and Emily," she pointed to each of them in turn. She stuck out a hand.

"Oxbridge is overrated anyway," Clara smiled, taking the hand. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the Doctor's astonished expression. "So," Clara said, "tell us about your missing friend."

**A/N: this is only intended to be a short fic. Nothing epic and sweeping. Essentially, a Doctor Who episode, featuring the Liars.**


	2. Chapter 2

"Sorry, did you say blonde girl wearing a red coat?" Clara casually asked. Spencer nodded. "Like her?" Clara pointed, as a girl, the ends of her blond hair poking out from her raised hood, ducked through the exit of the tent, and back into the graveyard. Without a word, the four girls ran dashed after her, Clara and the Doctor close on their heels.

"Ali? Ali!" Emily yelled as the figure disappeared around a corner. There was a hint of desperation in her voice. Clara wondered just how long they'd been chasing their once believed to be dead friend, just how much finding Ali meant to each of them. And why did Ali, if it was Ali, keep finding them, just to keep running? Was she trying to lead them somewhere? Clara didn't understand why the girl didn't just meet her friends in secret, tell them she was alive and enlighten the stressed group of girls. Perhaps Ali wasn't the friend they assumed she was. Immediately, guilt swamped Clara. There must be some good reason. She had no right to judge what she didn't know.

They skid to a stop, seconds after the girl in the red coat turned the corner. Eyes squinting into the area she went, there was no sign of her. She'd melted into nothing. The six of them inched forward.

"Ali?" Emily called again. Silence answered. It was a mausoleum of some sort, a great marble structure, statues with blank unblinking eyes lining the walls. Clara checked behind several of them, just in case.

"Girls don't just disappear into thin air," the Doctor muttered, just as Spencer exclaimed "Look!"

She pointed at a patch on the ground. "No leaves," she said, "which means this moves."

"I knew that," the Doctor remarked, "or, I could have known that. Would have, if I looked." He reached into the inside pocket of his great coat, and pulled out his sonic screwdriver. He pointed it at the door, scanning it.

"What is that?" Aria stared, as the sound echoed across the mausoleum.

"Sonic screwdriver. Now, no one get in the way. That statue's heavy, but I'm trying to move it," grunted the Doctor.

"Sonic wouldn't work on stone," Spencer dismissed, just as the statue began to grind against the ground. The four girls gaped. Clara suppressed a smile.

"You'd be surprised at what a sonic screwdriver can do," she murmured into the ear of an astonished Spencer. She looked into the place revealed by the door; a set of stairs lead down into the dark. The Doctor adjusted his top hat and took the first steps. Halfway down, the door slid shut.

"Hey!" Emily bolted back up, "open up! Who's there?" She banged against the stone, but it remained resolute.

"Why does this always happen?" Aria groaned. The Doctor soniced the steps.

"Trigger mechanism on that step," he pointed, "releases the door and closes it when someone steps on it. No way to open it from this side."

"Onwards and downwards then," Clara pushed past the Doctor, setting foot inside what seemed to be a tunnel.

"There'll be another way out. Tunnels; no one ever builds them to lead nowhere. Besides, there's a breeze. Feel it?" the Doctor noted, squinting against the wind. The lights mounted on the walls hummed, flickered.

"Ali!" Emily called into the space. The sound echoed back to her. The Doctor used his sonic screwdriver again, the green light eerie in the dark. A rat darted past their feet and Hanna screamed. Clara's heart slammed in her chest. She wondered that it hadn't broken out of her ribcage yet.

The Doctor started left. The wind picked up and they had to lift their arms to shield their eyes from dust and dirt and shards of debris as it pelted them. They pushed on, feet shuffling against the floor, bodies leaning into the wind. Clara felt Spencer in front of her, Emily behind.

Another gust and the lights went out. A power shortage was exactly what they needed in that moment. They still pushed onwards. Clara hoped that the Doctor was right, that this was the way they were supposed to be headed. Who was she to doubt? He wasn't often wrong.

They stopped when another gust almost blew them off their feet. Hats went flying into the dark. The Doctor cursed when his top hat when flying past Clara's head. Then, just as quickly as it had started, the wind died, the leaves swirling into a pile at their feet. Clara let out a sigh of relief, just like the girls on either side of her.

"Hanna? Oh my god. Hanna!" Aria yelled and Clara's heart leapt into her throat.

"Where did she go?" Emily panicked, eyes frantically darting around.

"I thought she was right behind you, Aria," Spencer accused.

"She was!"

"Oh no. Oh no no no," the Doctor groaned from behind them all. He stared at the statue that they'd passed in the dark. One of its hands was outstretched, inches from Aria's shoulder. "Get away from that statue, Aria, now!"

They scrambled away from it.

Clara touched the Doctor's shoulder. "What is it?" she whispered.

"Nobody blink. Keep staring at that statue, and don't look away. Don't even blink. Long as you can. Whatever you do, don't blink!"


	3. Chapter 3

"Doctor, what happened to Hanna? Why are we staring unblinkingly at a statue? It's a statue!" Spencer said, exasperated.

"It's not just a statue. Look at it. When the lights were on, its hands were covering its face. It's a Weeping Angel. Quantum locked beings that feed off time energy," the Doctor explained.

"Yeah, I didn't understand a word of that," Aria said, still staring at the statue that had almost touched her.

"It doesn't move when you're looking at it, but as soon as you look away," the Doctor gestured with his hands, "poof, it moves. And when it touches you, you get sent back in time. The Angels feed off the energy that creates."

Out of the corner of her eye, Clara could see Spencer frowning, her eyes watering as she stared at the Angel. Clara's own eyes were burning. "Energy can't be created. It's against the laws of physics," Spencer choked out, then clenched her jaw, determined not to blink.

The Doctor opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted before he could get a word out.

"Physics schmysics. Can we talk about the fact that Hanna just got transported back in time?" Aria snapped.

"What are we supposed to tell her parents?!" Emily freaked out beside Clara. Nobody looked away from the Weeping Angel. The Doctor cleared his throat.

"The important thing here is that we get away from the Weeping Angel. We can save Hanna. But right now, you are my priority. So, everybody just back away, slowly, and don't take your eyes off that statue!"

Slowly, step by shuffling step, the group of them made their way backwards, heels hitting debris that they couldn't see. The Angel stood motionless, one hand extended outwards, its face contorted into the kind of expression that Clara hoped would never crop up in her nightmares. By the time they reached the corner and the Weeping Angel slipped out of sight, the five of them were running for their lives, hearts pounding in their ears.

* * *

Hanna hit the ground with a crack. Her head spun, blackness creeping in around the edges. The room was dark, but the soft din of a large number of people talking floated in from the other side of the door. It took her a minute, but the darkness subsided, and she managed to lift herself up off the floor. She'd lost her hat, but her dress, the 1920s style get up that she'd bought in Philly was fine, thankfully; it had cost a fortune. Ever since The Great Gatsby film, people were clamoring to emulate Jay Gatsby's famous parties; so far, none had been nearly as successful, the least of which was the graveyard party that she and her friends had attended in Ravenswood, all for the sake of finding Ali before A did. That asshole. If Hanna ever got her hands on him, he'd need more than some creepy gas mask to get breathing again.

With a soft click, she opened the door and slipped out into the corridor, her heels sinking into the lush carpet underfoot. The voices sounded from the end of the hallway, and Hanna followed them. Intertwined with the sounds of people talking, she heard a gentle piano melody, the kind of thing that would put her to sleep if she was in her room listening to it, but seemed perfect for the party setting; well, for a party that clearly wasn't for teenagers. That much was made clear when she finally entered the room and found herself in a room of beautifully clad people, most clutching at tall glasses of champagne and smoking cigarettes, the smoke of which clung to the ceiling in a dull grey haze. Despite her dress, Hanna felt as out of place as a blue telephone box in a graveyard. She pressed her back against the wall, hoping to spot someone she knew.

Confused thoughts raced through her mind. She had no recollection of how she'd ended up at this house, this party, from the underground tunnels. Panic started rising in her throat as she realised that she had no idea where Emily or Aria or Spencer were. Taking a deep breath, she told herself to keep calm. If she could survive a night in a gay bar, or the night she crashed her boyfriend's car into a tree, or basically any other freaking night of her life, she could survive a night at a stranger's fancy dress party in a mansion. A footman offered her a drink on a silver platter. Without a second thought, she took it and downed it. The alcohol made her body temperature rise, but she itched for another drink anyway. She was just about to flag another footman when someone bumped into her.

"Oh, I'm so sor-" his apology was cut off midsentence as the man and Hanna recognised each other.

"Caleb?!"

* * *

Clara slammed the door shut behind her, the last of the group to enter the room, panting, dirt and sweat streaking her face. She glanced around at the others. No one was missing, save Hanna, but if the Doctor said that he could save her, then he could save her; there was time for that yet. Sometimes her faith in him wavered, but never when it came to saving the life of an innocent person. Somehow the Doctor always came through. He sweeped the room with his sonic screwdriver, the green light out of place among the dust and the once luxurious furniture.

"So," he said, clapping his hands together, "two lost friends and Weeping Angels. I love the 21st century!"

Spencer, Aria and Emily were already looking around. Clara watched as Spencer trailed her fingers over the ivory keys of the piano that stood in the centre of the room, the tinkling notes hanging in the air as heavy as the dust that the five of them breathed. Light fixtures on the walls hummed with electricity, the yellow spilling in pools on the wall. Above their heads, a chandelier was dark.

"Ali was here," Emily whispered. Aria shook her head.

"How do you know?"

"Gut feeling."

"I love those! Gut feelings, they're always right," the Doctor grinned, "which means we're closer to one lost friend being one found friend."

Clara drew her jacket closer. Around her, the house yearned, lonely and empty, with too many rooms coated in dust and withered, forgotten memories; its opulence reduced to almost nothing. In the belly of the beast, she was a pathogen, and pathogens were always evicted or destroyed. A hallway stretched out before her, the rich carpet turned grey with accumulated dust. Shadows pulsed out of open doors to unknown rooms. Spencer came to stand beside her. Just the presence of her there made Clara feel better, less alone. The fabric of their sleeves brushed each other.

"Does he really know what he's doing?" Spencer asked softly, not indicating who she meant, nor looking even looking at Clara. The Doctor's companion said nothing for a moment. Did he? Certainly not, not most of the time, but he caught on quicker than everybody else, and maybe that's all that mattered. He'd saved her life more than once. Endangered her too, but she was still standing here, so what did it matter?

"Yes," she said. Spencer nodded.

"Emily was right. Ali's been here. I feel it too. God, we're so close. After three years, we might actually see her again, we might find out what's going on, whether the hell that we've been put through was worth it. Our lives have turned into a damn nightmare since they found her body, and we know now about as much as we knew then, which is nothing," Spencer bowed her head, and out of the corner of her eye, Clara saw the taller girl wrap her arms around herself, trembling, although whether from cold or rage or something else, Clara couldn't tell. She put her own arm around Spencer's shoulder.

"If the Doctor says he'll find her, he will. He's good at finding lost people."

The man in question was stalking around the room, tapping walls, listening, gazing down the other corridors that branched off, and muttering to himself. Clara caught him going to adjust his top hat, only to realise it wasn't there. The expression on his face turned sour.

"There's something odd about this house," he declared.

"You don't say," Aria rolled her eyes, "it's a dark, abandoned mansion that hasn't been lived in in years"

"Well yes, there is that, but there's more, below the surface. You're not thinking hard enough. You're not asking why."

"Why what?" Emily frowned.

"Why the house was abandoned," Spencer stepped towards the Doctor. He guffawed, a goofy, proud smile spreading over his face. He pointed a finger at Spencer.

"Exactly." He spun around, arms open. "Look at this place! Mahogany panels, chandeliers, baby grands - this place belonged to a very wealthy family. Why would they suddenly disappear? Why would people stop living in a magnificent house like this? Unless there was something malignant going on."

"Something like a Weeping Angel? I think this case closes itself," Aria pointed out, cocking an eyebrow.

"Ha! Wrong! The Angel moved in after the family moved out. Place was already abandoned. It's something else."

"How do you know that the house was already abandoned?" Spencer argued, "I think Aria's right. A statue that sends people back in time, of course the people who lived here disappeared; the Angel sent them back in time! It explains everything."

"Small place, this town, isn't it?" the Doctor ran a finger over the lid of the piano, "the kind of place where if people started disappearing, other people would notice. The kind of place where other people would panic if there was no discernable reason their friends kept going missing. And yet, they're throwing _parties_." He stared hard at them. Clara felt herself shrink back away from that stare. "If the Angel had been here for quite a while, I'd say we'd be dealing with an abandoned town, not just an abandoned house. And if it were the Weeping Angel, we'd be dealing with an entire flock of them, not just a single statue. No, that Angel's alone, abandoned like the rest of this place."

"So what are we dealing with?" asked Emily from the far corner of the room. "And what do we do to get Hanna and Ali back?"


	4. Chapter 4

"Come on!" Caleb dragged Hanna out of the ballroom, his fingers digging into her skin. She wriggled free as they entered a private room and shut the door.

"Hey, get off me! What the hell is going on? Where are we?" she fired the questions at him without pausing for breath. Caleb, his dark hair falling around his eyes, sighed. Not the kind of sigh that indicated annoyance, but a deeper sigh, the kind that told stories of heartache and nightmares coming true. Hanna's heart sank.

"Of course this had to happen," Caleb groaned.

"Will you tell me _what _the hell is happening!"

"Hanna! Can you please give me a second? I'm processing!" Hanna frowned, looking at her boyfriend, really looking.

"Caleb?" she looked up into his face. He sighed again. The thing that had been niggling at her since she'd recognised him in the other room floated to the surface. She wasn't just imagining things; Caleb looked _older_. Spidery lines branched out from the corners of his eyes, needle point thin, and a deep crease that she'd never seen before ran up his forehead, between his eyes. She took a step back, heart hammering in her ribcage.

"Caleb?" she repeated, a whisper. His eyes pierced through her, laden with emotion. Suddenly the distance between seemed as vast as an ocean, and as uncrossable. Hanna shivered.

"You might want to sit down," Caleb led her to a wooden chair, draped in red velvet. The fabric seemed foreign beneath her fingertips. Whatever this place was, it didn't sit right with her. Who the hell had velvet upholstery?

At least there was Caleb. Maybe he wasn't her Caleb, she could sense that, but her Caleb was in there somewhere, beneath layers of age and finery, beneath the rim of his top hat, below the fine etchings of lines on his face. But his caution was grating on her nerves.

"Alright. Now, out with it. Talk!" she demanded, throwing her hands up in the air. Caleb audibly swallowed, his hands shoved deep into his coat pockets. His nervousness was infectious; Hanna felt it at the base of her spine, a cold hand that could tear her to bits in seconds.

"The good news is that you're still in Ravenswood," he began, making Hanna wonder what the bad news was. As if being in Ravenswood wasn't bad enough. The town gave her the fucking creeps. She couldn't wait to get back home. Rosewood wasn't so bad after all.

"The bad news," Caleb continued, "is that it's 1914."

"What is that? Like twenty four hour time?"

"No, Hanna, like the year," Caleb shot back, visibly annoyed now. It took Hanna a second for the words to sink in. But when they did, it was like a bomb had gone off inside her head. Caleb wouldn't lie to her, not about something like that. He might lie to protect her, but what kind of lie would result in him dressing up in coattails to tell her that the year was 1914?

"Hanna," he was kneeling in front of her now. "Hanna, you need to listen to me. I was in Ravenswood, you'd walked away, told me to stay behind, right after I took a bus for hours just to get to you. I found out later that the others lost you in the tunnels, but you didn't mention it then, just kissed me and told me to stay. A few months later, I was here, in this house with Miranda, in 2013, looking for something - anything - to help me understand why this town was so strange. And then there was a booth, a phone booth, with this old fashioned phone in the cradle. It rang and I answered. There was no one on the other end. So I hung up. When Miranda and I came out of the phone booth, it was 1902."

Hanna's head reeled. "Who's Miranda?"

Caleb laughed, throwing his head back, a full hearted laugh. He steadied himself against Hanna's knee. "I just told you that we travelled back in time, and your first question is 'who is Miranda?' I've missed you."

"I need to know who the bitch exploring abandoned houses with my boyfriend is!" Hanna explained, ruffled by the laughter. Sure, getting stuck in 1914 was going to be a problem. What was she going to do without her cell or proper electricity or her Prada heels? But as long as she had Caleb, it wouldn't matter. She could always work on finding a way back. After all, if you could fall through a hole in the universe once, surely you could do it twice. She focused when she saw the expression on Caleb's face, completely sober and piercing through her again. Sorrow softened the corners of his eyes.

"Hanna, Miranda's my wife."

* * *

"There's nothing in this room," Spencer sighed, staring into the dim light of yet another dust covered room. Clara nodded. Along the corridor came sounds of the others, opening doors, rummaging, the sound of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. None of them really knew what they were supposed to be looking for. "Anything out of place," the Doctor had said, but in a house like that, it could be anything. Most things were out of place, from a different era. Clara felt like she was walking through a museum.

"Can I ask you something?" Spencer said softly as the two of them trod the carpet down to the next room. Clara shrugged, inviting the question. Spencer frowned for a moment before asking. She opened the next door and the two of them entered. "You think he can really find Hanna?"

"Sure," Clara nodded, shrugging again. "He's found lost people before."

"Yeah, but time travel? That whole thing about the Weeping Angel? How can that possibly be real?"

"You'd be surprised. I used to think the same thing, that the universe was so small, that impossible things didn't happen. That there were rules. He showed me that it wasn't true. I've seen things, Spencer, that I never would have thought possible. I've skirted around a black hole, seen aliens, proper aliens. Proper _lesbian_ aliens. And I've seen people die. More people than I would like," Clara's voice dropped to a whisper. They'd stopped in the centre of the room and Spencer was looking at her. Her fingers wrapped around Clara's.

"No one's going to die tonight. If impossible things happen, then Hanna's coming back in one piece, we stop the Weeping Angel and everything goes back to normal," she murmured, her voice soft, but insistent. And Clara trusted her. More than she trusted the Doctor, as if in that moment, hell could come knocking on her door, and Spencer would keep it out, keep her safe. It took her aback.

_Ring._

_Ring._

The sound shot through the air, making the two of them jump out of their skins. Clara came back to herself and her eyes darted around the room, trying to find the source of the sound.

"Is that a _phone_?" Spencer asked, face screwed up in disbelief. They broke apart, searching the room, atop tables and beneath layers of dust, until Clara pulled open a door and found herself face to face with the ringing phone. Spencer was right behind her. She reached a trembling hand out and picked up off the hook. She heard the link click. She raised it to her ear.

"Hello?"

"Hello? Is anyone there? Help, please!"

Both Spencer and Clara stared at each other, wide eyed. Clara turned her attention back to the phone, but only for a second. From behind her, she heard "well, shit" and turned to find the Weeping Angel, arm outstretched, several metres away.

"Hello? Hello? Is anybody there? I need help. I need a doctor."

_Me too_, Clara thought to herself, the phone to her ear, her eyes already starting to water. The lights started to flicker.

"There's something here, the house is shaking. I found this phone booth. The phone was ringing. I don't know who you are or why you're calling, but I need your help. Who are you? Why aren't you speaking? Do you think this is funny? I need help!" the voice was coming from the speaker, a woman's voice, terrified. Clara wanted to say something to calm her, to let her know that there was someone on the other end of the phone. But nothing came. There was nothing but the Weeping Angel and Spencer, in front of her. If one of them blinked, Spencer had no chance. Slowly, she inched out of the phone booth, pushing Spencer behind her, slipping the phone into her hand. Somehow, neither of them blinked.

"What are you doing?" Spencer furiously whispered. "Now you're in its way."

"And you're not," Clara replied. "It's a win-win situation."

"No it's not you English ponce. It's going to send you back in time! How is that a win-win situation?"

"Well, nobody blinks, and everybody stays in the present. Now don't look away and don't blink!" Clara urged. Now she was standing before the Angel, the reality was sinking in, and going back in time wasn't as appealing without the prospect of riding there in a blue box. The lights buzzed, but stayed on. The voice still came through the telephone. Nobody paid it any attention.

"You know, there's a way that we can blink and still not have the Angel move," Spencer whispered into Clara's ear, her breath warm and wet. "No, listen," she said as Clara moved to protest. "We have to alternate blinking. As long as there's one person looking at it, the Angel can't move."

"Great, I'm stuck in a phone booth with a crazy person. Again," Clara growled, exasperated.

"It'll work!" promised Spencer. "I'll tap your shoulder every few seconds. Blink as soon as I tap you. I'll wait a few seconds and then blink, then tap you again."

"Who am I talking to? Are you there? The lights are flickering. Someone is hurt. I can't find my husband. My name is Mrs. Rivers. Mrs. Miranda Rivers and the year is 1914. If you're there, send help," the voice from the phone pleaded. Spencer lifted it to her ear.

"Listen ma'am, we're in trouble of our own. There's a statue trying to kill us, and we're stuck in this phone booth with a phone that rang. We didn't call you. You called us. There's nothing we can do. I'm sorry."

"You are there! Please, please! I don't know what to do. This house, my house, is shaking. Everything is dark. I think someone is bleeding."

"Listen. There's nothing I can do!" Spencer almost shouted, tapping Clara's shoulder. "I'm looking at imminent death by a statue that feeds off Time Energy. I would love to do something, but there is literally nothing I can do. I'm sorry, lady, but you're on your own."

"You sound as crazy as I do, so I'm just going to come out and say this. If it's my last chance to confess it, I might as well tell it to a stranger. My name is Miranda Rivers, but once I was Miranda Collins. I came from a place called Ravenswood in 2013. The man I married was a man called Caleb Rivers. He came with me. I don't know how we got here. All I know was that we answered a phone in my uncle's abandoned manor and when we hung up and exited the box the phone was in, it was 1902," the woman said.

"Wait! What did you say? Did the box has frosted windows? In the third room on the right in the east corridor?" Spencer yelled into the phone, tapping Clara again. The line crackled into the silence.

"How did you know that?"

Spencer shuffled further back into the booth, pulling Clara in with her by the back of her jacket. Footsteps shuffled outside of the room, and the Doctor, Aria and Emily burst in, faces wild. But Spencer was already slamming the phone down on the hook.


	5. Chapter 5

"Where did they go?" Aria panicked, staring at the spot where Spencer and Clara had just disappeared.

"Look at the Angel! And don't blink!" the Doctor shouted, pointing, before dashing off. Aria and Emily stared at the Weeping Angel, it's back to them. The Doctor soniced the phone in the back ground. He stalked around the box, quickly, rapping it with his knuckles, pointing his screwdriver at it, the sound a constant buzz in the air. Aria's eyes watered. She blinked. The Angel didn't move.

"Hey, did you just blink?" she whispered to Emily.

"No! Are you crazy? That thing'll kill us if we blink!" came back the reply, strained and anxious. "What do you think happened to Spencer?"

"Shh. I think we can keep the Angel rooted to its spot if we blink at different times. I'll count to three, and I'll blink on three. So you don't blink on three, blink on two. Like harmonising."

"Aria, I don't know anything about music!" Emily exclaimed.

"Well, pretend!"

The Doctor muttered to himself as they did this, ignoring everything except the phone booth and the fact that Clara disappeared, that she could, at that moment, be anywhere in the universe. She could be dead. The thought killed him. He wasn't ready to lose another companion. Not so soon. Not ever.

"C'mon Clara, you Impossible Girl. Where are you? Talk to me."

The phone rang.

* * *

The ground beneath Clara's feet trembled. There was almost no light, except what was leaking through the window of the room, from the moon. As her eyes adjusted, she recognised the room. Disorientation dissipated as she took in the lush carpet, the tables, the phone booth. A woman was curled on her knees in front of the phone, weeping into her hands.

"Are you alright?" Clara whispered to Spencer who was struggling to her feet beside her.

"Yeah, I think so. Are you?"

"Nothing broken, so yeah, I'd say I'm fine. Plus, I know where we are," Clara said, looking at the woman on the floor. The house groaned as it shook.

"It worked?" Spencer wondered in amazement. "I can't believe it worked. Not that I'm complaining."

The two of them crept closer to the woman. Her shoulders shook as she cried. The phone hung in empty space, moving backwards and forwards as the tremors rocked the building. She was muttering something.

"Come back, please, come back. I don't want to die alone. I need help. I wish I'd never ended up here."

"Hello? Hello, we're here to help. I'm Clara and this is Spencer," Clara said soothingly, adopting the Doctor's tone of voice when he came across a distressed person. The woman lowered her hands and turned around. Spencer had a hand on Clara's shoulder, and leaning forward, murmured in her ear.

"I think this is the woman we were just talking to on the phone."

Clara shot her a look of surprise, but didn't back down. She extended a hand to the woman.

"Miranda?" Spencer asked quietly, cautiously. The woman frowned at them and dropped her hand.

"Do I know you? What are you doing in my house?"

"You won't believe this," Spencer said, "but we were talking on the phone a minute ago."

"You! You hung up on me! I can't believe you hung up on me!" Miranda yelled. Clara and Spencer backed away.

"You know, maybe this isn't the best time to talk about this," Clara intervened.

"I had to! There was a Weeping Angel threatening to kill us. I had to hang up to get out of there. It was a stalemate. Eventually one of us would lose, and I didn't want it to be us," Spencer growled back. Miranda looked bewildered. Clara had the realisation that the poor woman had no idea what they were talking about. She'd never seen a Weeping Angel. Probably had never heard of them either. And Clara couldn't explain the whole situation to her. The woman glowered at her and Spencer.

"I have no idea who you are or what you're doing here, but I have to find my husband and get out of this house before this earthquake, or whatever it is brings everything down around us. I don't know why I hung around so long, except that I thought I should come to the phone. I don't know what came over me. And if I'd known that you were what I'd get in return, I wouldn't have bothered," she spat. She began to stride out of the room, shoulders hunched in anger, and, Clara guessed, disappointment. She and Spencer weren't exactly the cavalry that Miranda was obviously expecting.

She and Spencer turned on their heels to follow her, but then a sound cracked through the darkness and the three of them stopped in their tracks.

_Ring_.

* * *

The Doctor looked at the phone. Stared at it. Reached out to grab it. Didn't. He pulled out his screwdriver and pointed it at the device. The readings were off the scale. He picked it up.

"Geronimo?"

"Doctor? I'm glad to hear your voice," Clara's voice came through from the other end. "Do you really answer the phone with 'geronimo'?"

"What? No! Focus Clara! Where are you? How are you calling me?"

"Calling you? Doctor, you called me! And I think I'm in 1914. I'm with Spencer. And a woman called Miranda. We were on the phone with her before Spencer hung up. When she did, we ended up here. Doctor, what's happening?"

"Two telephones ringing at exactly the same time from two different points in time?" the Doctor muttered to himself under his breath, thinking. Clara heard him.

"Not just two phones, Doctor. The same phone. Calling from different years. How is that possible?" she asked into the phone, her voice travelling the impossible line across the years. The Doctor paused in his thinking.

"The same phone? Clara, are you sure? I need you to be one hundred percent sure about this."

"I'm sure, Doctor! What does it mean?"

The Doctor ran a hand through his hair. He grinned.

"Oh, you wonderful, clever thing, you," he said to the phone. "It means there's a rip in the fabric of the universe. This phone booth, this phone, it's a hole. It's a rift."

"Can you do something? Because there's an earthquake here. At least, I think it's an earthquake. Everything is shaking," Clara informed the Doctor, trying to keep the panic from her voice. The Doctor swung to check the Weeping Angel and the two girls staring at it. The statue hadn't moved. His brain shifted gears. Thoughts flew through his mind faster than he could register them. Everything he ever knew was coming at him, details and facts and useless knowledge, sifting through them all, trying to give him something that would help.

"Doctor?"

"Oh, it's nothing Clara, just the rift collapsing. If we don't close it, the whole house would fall into the hole. And if it goes, then we die. Not just you, us too. So we have to close the rift."

"How do we do _that_?"

The Doctor stared at the Weeping Angel, a smile beginning to spread over his face. "Don't worry Clara. I have a plan!"

He let the phone drop, not putting it back on the hook.

* * *

"I hate it when he says that," Clara muttered. Spencer looked at her expectantly.

"Well?"

"He says he has a plan. Apparently the house is built on a rift, and this phone is in the centre of it. This," she gestured around them at the house, "it's not an earthquake. It's the rift collapsing."

Spencer and Miranda looked horrified. Clara grinned.

"Don't worry. The Doctor has a plan."

"I have to find Caleb," Miranda announced, and walked out of the room, starting down the corridor, back to where the party was being held. Spencer and Clara followed, calling out to her to stop.

"I'm not leaving him behind. We've been through a lot. I've already told you that we're from 2013. I'm not going through something this big again without him."

"Wait, Caleb? Caleb Rivers? You're married to Caleb Rivers?" Spencer gasped, catching up to Miranda. The woman frowned.

"Yes."

"Oh," Spencer guffawed, "I hope you have a cemetery plot, because Hanna is going to kill you."

"Hanna? Marin? Caleb's ex-girlfriend? She left him. I doubt she's going to be killing anybody," Miranda said coolly. Spencer shook her head.

"No she didn't. As far as Hanna knows, Caleb is still her boyfriend." That gave Miranda pause. But as they turned the corner, they came face to face with the pair themselves.

"Spence!" Hanna cried out when the familiar face of her friend appeared out of the dark. She threw herself into the taller girl's arms. "I'm so glad to see you. I have no idea what's going on. Apparently this is 1914 and my boyfriend is married to some other woman!"

Caleb approached his wife, concern written on his features. They had a conversation under their breaths, away from the others. Clara stood aside, out of her depth in the tangle of other people's lives. Hers might be a dangerous life, but at least it wasn't this complicated. Even before she travelled with the Doctor it wasn't so bad.

The house shuddered around them, more forceful this time. Clara cleared her throat.

"We should go. Back to the phone booth. If the Doctor's got a plan, we'll need to be where he thinks we are."

"Are you Miranda?" Hanna called, spotting the woman Caleb was talking to.

"Han, not now," Spencer whispered, tugging her arm. Hanna wrenched herself free.

"That's me," Miranda half shrugged. Caleb glowered at Hanna.

"Hanna," he warned.

"What?" she shot. "I just want to meet the woman who marries my boyfriend. Is that a crime?"

"He wasn't your boyfriend when I married him. You left him in Ravenswood and skittered back to your little rich girls' town after he came all those miles to be with you, to help you. You just left him there. Things happened after you left. Life happened," Miranda scowled. A sense of urgency built up in Clara's chest, panic rising in her throat. She shot a pleading look at Spencer, who gave a small, helpless shrug. She tugged at Hanna's sleeve again, but was ignored.

"And for the record," Miranda added, "we didn't get married until we got here. It was 1908. You weren't even born. You were long gone. The chances of seeing you again were less than impossible."

"But here I am."

"Here you are," Caleb sighed.

"None of us are going to be here if we keep talking. Go back to the phone booth. I actually want to live to see tomorrow. The drama can wait. Hanna, come on!" Spencer yanked again, and this time Hanna complied. The five of them piled into the corridor, feeling their way to the room with the phone booth. When they entered, the phone was silent.

But only for a moment.

* * *

"Clara!" the Doctor yelled into the phone. "Clara, I need you to listen to me. I will come and get you, I promise. Cross my hearts. But more urgently, I need to close this rift. So don't panic!"

The house rocked and rumbled, the lights flickering. In one huge movement, the earth moving beneath Clara's feet, the windows burst inwards, spraying the room with shards of glass.

"Doctor, hurry!"

He left the phone hanging there, leaving the line open. His plan would work, surely, it would work. He hoped. He took a step away from the phone booth and felt it, a tremor, the house shivering as the earth shook its foundations. The Doctor's hearts pounded in his chest. He had to move now, or else it was too late. If the rift started pulling the house in from this time zone, then it was doing it across all times, a disaster rippling across the fabric of the universe, of all universes. But it wasn't just any rift. It spouted time energy, the way the sun had solar flares - big balls of energy that were thrown out into the universe. That's why the Weeping Angel was attracted to this place, to this house. A lone survivor trying its best to live off what it could find. The Doctor almost felt pity for it then, motionless marble trapped by the gaze of two teenage girls.

"You two," he pointed to Emily and Aria, "back here, into the phone booth. C'mon, c'mon, we haven't got all day."

They stumbled backwards, keeping their eyes on the Angel, even though the Doctor had his on it too. He took a breath. Another tremor, stronger this time, ran through the house. The phone, hanging in empty air, twitched. The Doctor sorely hoped this would work. All of time and space and he still hadn't learned how to close a rift yet. But it should work. Probably.

"Alright," he leaned in and spoke in a low voice into the ears of the two girls. "On the count of three, we're all going to close our eyes."

"What?!" Aria and Emily shouted in unison, wild, fear filled eyes darting back to the Doctor to check if he was serious. He was.

"Count of three, close your eyes. Trust me. I need you both to trust me. The Weeping Angel is going to move towards us, but once it gets to the phone booth, the heart of the rift, once it touches the phone, it'll fall through and the rift will be closed. The Angel feeds off time energy, and this, oh, this beautiful, clever rift, it's all errant time energy, displacing people in history. It wants the Angel, and the Angel wants it. They just didn't know it."

"I have no idea what you just said, but fine," Aria nodded, closing her eyes tight. "I just hope you're right."

Emily made sounds of uncertainty and fear, but she too closed her eyes. The Doctor kept his open for a moment longer.

"Geronimo," he whispered under his breath, then screwed his eyes shut just as the house gave a great shudder.


	6. Chapter 6

The Doctor opened his eyes a split second after he'd closed them. And let out the breath he'd been holding. The Angel was inches away, it's face contorted into a mask of rage, its hands reaching out, fingers splayed, like a demonic vision. Beneath his hands, the two teenage girls were trembling. He lifted his hands from their shoulders, gently, to not startle them.

"You can open your eyes," he murmured. They did. Emily let out a gasp and took a step back, only to ram her back into the phone.

"Ouch!" she rubbed her back with a hand. "Stupid phone."

"Ah, but that phone is actually our saviour. You see," the Doctor said, picking up the free hanging phone by the microphone end, "if I touch it to the Weeping Angel," he did and the Angel was engulfed in a white light that seared the three of them in one blazing moment, before fading, taking the vicious Weeping Angel with it.

"Tada," the Doctor finished. He dropped the phone back in its place. Nothing happened. He smiled, the grin stretching from ear to ear. "See, it's gone. All back to normal."

"What did you do?" Aria asked in disbelief. "One second it was there, and then, just…gone."

"And we're still here too. Not that anyone's complaining," Emily added. The Doctor laughed.

"Time rift. It was sending out time energy, the stuff that the Angel feeds off. So, put them together," he waved his hands about, "and they cancel each other out."

"So no more weird, travelling back in time?" Aria raised an eyebrow. The Doctor pointed a finger at her.

"Exactly."

"So what about Hanna?" Emily pointed out.

"Yeah, and Spencer. And your friend, Clara? How do we bring them back?"

The Doctor laughed again, this time pointing at himself.

"Did I ever mention?" he smirked, "time traveller."

* * *

Clara lowered her arm from in front of her eyes. Greens and oranges danced across her vision, afterimages of the light that had burst forth from the phone booth a moment before. Spencer, beside Clara, put a hand on her shoulder.

"What was that?"

"No idea," Clara replied, "but I really hope it was the Doctor."

"I don't see him. He did promise a rescue, right? I don't want to be stuck here for the rest of my life. I might not have gotten into Stanford, but a Hastings has other ways to prove herself. Besides, Melissa would just love being an only child. We can't have that," Spencer smirked thinly to Hanna.

"Screw your sister, what am I supposed to do without a mall? Or flushing toilets!?" Hanna cried.

"Actually," Caleb said in his low, steady voice, "we have flushing toilets. They're not the same as the twenty first century ones, but they work just fine."

"Why didn't you say so? I've been holding my pee for the past four hours!" Hanna growled.

"Too much information, Han," said Spencer.

"Hey wait, do you hear that?" Miranda interrupted, catching the attention of the whole group.

"No tremors," pointed out Spencer. Suddenly Clara's ears were filled with the silence. How did she miss it before? Warmth began to spread through her chest. If the earthquake was because of the rift collapsing, then the silence must mean that the Doctor succeeded. He closed the rift.

Just to prove her line of thinking, a breeze whipped up in the room, sending all the dust that had fallen from the ceiling spiraling into the air. Clara was on her feet before the familiar sound of the Tardis filled the room. Her grin could have lit up a Christmas tree.

The Tardis materialised in front of the small group and the door opened with a creak. The Doctor stepped out, but Clara was already there, almost tackling him in a hug.

"What the hell is that?" asked Spencer, gazing in suspicion on the blue box. Two more figures stepped out of it. Aria and Emily grinned.

"It's a time travel machine," Emily said.

"And space! Don't forget she does space too," the Doctor added. "It's your way home."

"But how? You just press some little doohickey and it takes us home? Back to 2013?"

Clara smiled at Spencer, at the confusion and disbelief.

"Is it any more unbelievable than a phone that could send us back in time? Or a statue? What happened to the Weeping Angel, by the way?"

"The rift ate it. Or something like that, anyway," Emily shrugged, pulling away from hugging Hanna.

"You know, I don't really care. I just want out of this stupid place. I miss home," the blonde girl said.

The Doctor pointed to the door, leaning his back against the phone compartment of the Tardis. He clicked his fingers and the door creaked open. Aria and Emily rushed back inside and Spencer began to follow in halting steps. Hanna turned to look at Caleb and Miranda.

"Well, come on, aren't you coming?" she said, inclining her head towards the door. Spencer was about to push into the mysterious blue box but stopped when Hanna's question didn't receive a reply. She turned around and saw Caleb looking at the ground, unable to meet Hanna's eye. The silence seemed to suck all the air out of the room. The seconds ticked by and felt like minutes.

"He can't," came the voice of the Doctor. He had his arms crossed over his chest and he looked at them all from below lowered brows. All his joviality had disappeared and he seemed just what he was; an old man who'd seen too much heartbreak to pretend it didn't hurt.

"Of course he can! It's a time machine, he can come back," Hanna insisted, despite the thumping of her heart and the knowledge that the strange man before her wouldn't lie about something like this. Clara touched her arm, murmuring Hanna's name, but the girl shook her off. "No," she said, "he has to come back."

Caleb said nothing, but he understood what Hanna hadn't realised yet.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," the Doctor shook his head. A tear ran down Hanna's cheek. It wasn't true. She didn't want to believe that it could be true, that this was the last she would see of Caleb, the man she could see herself married to one day, when they were old enough and all this business with Ali was over.

"Why?" she whispered.

"Time travel," the Doctor stated. "We closed the rift, meaning that Caleb from your time can't travel back to this time. He can't go back to the future because there can't be two of him in the same universe at the same time."

Comprehension dawned on Hanna, and she fervently wished that it hadn't. Caleb stepped forward and took her hand.

"Don't you understand, Hanna? You'll still have me. Not this version of me, but the version of me that you already have. This isn't a bad thing. I never came here, which means in your time, I'm still yours. When you go back I'll still be that guy who's had the same hoodie since he was twelve, who loves computers, and who loves you."

"But-"

"No, Han, listen. You won't see me again, but that doesn't mean you won't see Caleb."

They stared at each other, the words sinking in for Hanna, the realisation that the man standing before her wasn't her Caleb, not really, and a happy sort of ache started in her chest. She flung her arms around the man.

"I won't forget you," she whispered in his ear. He held her tighter, knowing this moment was the last he'd ever see of the girl he'd loved since he was sixteen, the girl he thought he'd never see again.

"Promise me something?" he asked, his voice struggling to come out, "visit my grave?" His voice cracked and Hanna's heart broke. Wiping the tears away with the back of her hand, she nodded.

"I promise."

"Tell me stories of your life. Tell me about all the things I couldn't be there for," he tried to smile. Hanna nodded, and without another word, strode into the Tardis. Spencer, Clara and the Doctor followed, and a moment later, Caleb and his wife were standing as the dust of their house settled back down around them.

* * *

Sunlight filtered down through the trees lining the paths of the cemetery, dancing along the ground in ever shifting patterns. Beneath Hanna's fingers, the sepia portrait of Caleb was dusty, as though no one had visited for a long, long time. The headstone, black marble, was cracked and worn, but his name was still legible, and the photograph of him still recognisably him. She sighed.

"I miss you already," she murmured, then walked away, to where her friends and the Doctor and Clara stood beside the Tardis, making their farewells.

"What about Ali? You said you'd help us find her," Emily pointed out.

"She wasn't in the past. And it's 2013; humans haven't decided to start inserting everybody with inter-galactic positioning trackers yet, so I have no way of honing in on her. But she's here somewhere. I think she's hiding. When she's ready, she'll come to you. They always do," the Doctor smiled.

"So there's nothing you can do?" said Emily, disappointment filling her voice. He shook his head.

"If there was, we would," Clara reassured. "She'll come back to you. The people you think you've lost have a way of doing that."

"Will we see you again?" Spencer asked, staring at Clara, who smiled and shrugged.

An amiable silence enveloped them. Clara always hated these goodbyes, these moments where you knew you wouldn't see those people that you'd temporarily given your heart to. She and the Doctor, they flitted in and out of people's lives, helping them when they could. That's what the Doctor did - he fixed them, their broken lives, their unsalvageable planets, their hearts. And that's what kept him going, all this time, the knowledge that he was making things better, to make up for all the bad he'd done before. But moments like these reminded Clara that she missed home.

Without warning, Spencer pulled Clara into a tight hug.

"Don't forget about us," she murmured furiously into Clara's hair.

"Of course not," promised Clara in return. "Of course not."

"Well then," the Doctor said, "off we pop. People to meet, worlds to save, all that."

He paused, his hand on the door of the Tardis, and looked over the four girls smiling at him and his magical blue box. For a second he allowed himself to feel something for them, a love that warmed his hearts and lifted the ache of a millennium off his back. He smiled. Then he pushed open to door and disappeared out of sight. Clara followed a moment later.

The four girls stood back as the Tardis slowly disintegrated from view, whipping up a small wind about them. A piece of paper fluttered towards them, getting caught on Aria's leg. She was about to brush it away, when on an impulse, she caught it up in her hand instead. She read it. Disbelieving, she showed it to the others, who all agreed, they would have to find out if it were true. Spencer took hold of the note, folded it and put it in her pocket, a memento of the two most extraordinary people she'd ever met. She thought about the contents of the note for the rest of the afternoon. Hours later, after the four of them had washed the dust out of their hair and off their faces, she pulled it out and ran a finger over the words.

_She's at the cotton factory._

_Good luck_

And down in the bottom right hand corner, where Spencer's finger lingered, was imprinted a small Tardis.

* * *

**A/N: And so there you have it, the last chapter. Thanks to everyone who was patient and who took the time to read this to the very end. You're fantastic. I hope it didn't disappoint.**


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